


The War on Grammar

by Woldy



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Crack, Ensemble Cast, Humour, Law Enforcement, Multi, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woldy/pseuds/Woldy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a vigilante group try to impose good grammar on the magical public then Harry and Ron are called to investigate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The War on Grammar

**Author's Note:**

> I think Lynne Truss bears a lot of the responsibility for this fic. That's my story and I'm sticking to it ;-). My own grammar is far from perfect and I probably ought to know better than to stow thrones in my grass house. Many thanks to [](http://nuclearsugars.livejournal.com/profile)[**nuclearsugars**](http://nuclearsugars.livejournal.com/) for beta-ing; all remaining mistakes are of course my own. Thanks to Dubya (this is only time I'll say that!) for providing so much opportunity for mockery.

_"With most wars you can say you've won when the other side are all dead or surrenders. But how is 'terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it is very hard for abstract nouns to surrender. In fact, it's very hard for abstract nouns to do anything at all of their own volition, and hard for even trained philologists to negotiate with them."_ Terry Jones in_ Terry Jones' War on the War on Terror_  
Harry joined the Aurors out of a desire to vanquish Dark wizards. Of course there was a lot less Dark magic happening these days, but that was a good thing. It wasn't as though Harry wanted more Dark wizards to appear just so that he could fight them, was it? He'd almost convinced himself of this right up until the day Dawlish called them into his office to investigate a punctuation extremist group.

"Sorry, what?" said Harry.

"The greatest threat to wizarding society at the moment," Dawlish repeated, "is posed by Radical Action for Grammar in English. It's here in the file – five incidents of destruction of property in the last month alone."

"They haven't really been destroying stuff have they?" Ron said doubtfully. "More like painting apostrophes onto it."

"I hope I don't have to remind you that graffiti _is_ wanton destruction of private property, Auror Weasley," Dawlish replied. "One of those buildings was burned to the ground. The national threat level has been raised to 'tangerine' and I want you to find the culprits."

"Yeah, right," Ron said as they left. "A nearly bankrupt greengrocer burns down and it must be terrorism."

Their mood didn't improve greatly upon opening the file and reading the list of suspects.

"If he's assigning me to investigate my own wife then Dawlish is more touched in the head than I'd thought," Ron said, crossing out the first entry on the list.

"We know it isn't Hermione anyway," Harry said. "It's a pretty good acronym. If she was running the group then it wouldn't be called RAGE."

"Yeah, then we'd be asking questions about 'ALGAE' or 'SMEGMA'. Thank Merlin we're spared that."

The second name on the list was barely an improvement.

"This is a nice surprise," Justin Finch Fletchley said, striking a seductive pose and shooting them a flirtatious look from beneath his lowered eyelashes. "I do like men in uniform."

"Er, sorry about this Justin," Harry said. "But we've been asked to question you about an alleged terrorist cell."

"Go on," Justin said, shifting to reveal an inch of lean stomach above his low-slung jeans.

"It's, um, an organisation of grammatical extremists," Harry continued, starting to feel uncomfortable under the intensity of Justin's gaze.

"And you thought it was a good opportunity to knock me up?" Justin asked hopefully, leaning closer. Both Harry and Ron took a step back.

"It's not us, Justin it's-"

"Look, they've got you on some list of dangerous radicals because of the whole gay activism thing-"

"You probably shouldn't have leaped on the leader of Zimbabwe."

"I am a big fan of direct action, it's true," Justin agreed. "Although that was a citizen's arrest."

"But you haven't been adding or removing apostrophes from shop displays?" Ron persisted.

Justin blinked at them, taken aback. "Why on earth would I want to do that?"

The third name on their list was frankly ridiculous.

"Harry! It's lovely to see you but I'm afraid Teddy is on a playdate at the moment," Andromeda told them, smiling from the doorway.

"Er," Harry said. "Actually, we've come for work. The Ministry thinks you might be burning down buildings."

"And interfering with punctuation," Ron added.

"Boys," Andromeda said, as the friendliness faded from her face and was replaced by something much haughtier. "While I'm a member of the House of Black, that doesn't automatically imply that I am a vicious criminal."  

"I'll take that as a no, shall I?" Harry said as Ron crossed Andromeda's name off the list of suspects.

Suspect number four was a lot less cooperative.

"Get lost, Potter," Malfoy said, his voice echoing from the gates of Malfoy Manor.

"Look, Malfoy, I'm here in my official capacity as-"  
   
"Do you have a search warrant?"

"We don't want to search anything, I'm just going to ask you some questions about-"

"I repeat, _do you have a search warrant?_"

"…No."

"Then fuck off."

They returned the following day with a search warrant, which Ron brandished menacingly at the gates.

"Now what do you want?" Malfoy's voice drawled.

"Seeing as we've got the warrant, open the damn gates." Harry said.

The gates swung open in what somehow seemed like a surly manner, although it wasn't nearly as offensive as the louche way Malfoy leaned against the front door. "So, the barbarians have come to pillage us again. Intent on a little payback, are we Potter?"

"Course not," said Harry, at the same time as Ron said "Maybe we are. What you going to do about it?"

Harry shot Ron a pointed look and took a deep breath in the effort to maintain an attitude of cool professionalism instead of punching Malfoy in the nose.

"We've come to ask if you have any connection to an organisation called RAGE."

"Is it a protest group for those who've tired of Auror harassment? If so, then my duty as a citizen would compel me to join," Malfoy said, smirking.

"It's about grammar," Harry bit out.

Malfoy's smirk expanded. "Then they've picked the worst possible people to investigate."

"Shut up, Malfoy," Ron growled.

"Just answer yes or no: have you set fire to a greengrocer's shop?"

"It's so hard to recall the details of all the terrible Death Eater activity I was involved in. What does my criminal record say?"

"Have you set fire to a greengrocer's _recently_?"

Malfoy looked far too amused for someone who could, technically, be arrested and thrown into jail at any moment. "No," he said.

"And have you engaged in any graffiti, at all?"

"During my misspent youth at Hogwarts-"

"_Recently?_"

Malfoy smirked some more. "No," he said.

"Thank you for helping us with our investigations," Harry said curtly, and heard Ron add almost under his breath, "You slimy, arrogant bastard."

"Any time," Malfoy lied smoothly and watched closely until they had left the grounds.

Suspects number five and six were even more problematic since, as far as Harry knew, both of them were deceased.

It took several long weeks of investigation before they got a lead from a suspicious character in Knockturn Alley. This lead them to Norway, where they spent two miserable days struggling through a freezing, hinkypunk-filled marsh before unspelling some extremely nasty jinxes and breaking three sets of wards. At the end of which Ron thumped on the door of a remote and frankly anti-climactic cottage.

Slowly, the door creaked open and a man stepped into the crack of light. "Yes?" enquired Remus.

"We, er, I mean, you're not dead," said Harry.

They heard the words "who are these bumbling nincompoops?" from inside the house, and then the door opened wider and Professor Snape appeared beside Remus, his hand resting comfortably on Remus' lower back.

"Neither of you are dead!" Ron said in amazement.

"We don't really want that to be common knowledge," Remus told them.

"Did you come all this way to regale us with your idiocy?" Snape said icily.

"Actually, we came to ask if either of you are involved in Radical Action for Grammar in English," said Harry.

Snape's eyes narrowed. "Yes, we are both dying to sacrifice our hard-won privacy for the sake of a few misplaced commas."

"I do hate split infinitives," said Remus thoughtfully, "but since the war I've given up the use of violence. I mean, the non-consensual use of violence."

"Right," Harry said, doing his best not to dwell on the kinds of consensual violence one might get up to in rural Norway, "Well, sorry for bothering you. I'm glad you're not, y'know, dead."

"Spare us these banal pleasantries, Mr Potter," Snape said, thrusting an object into each of his and Ron's right hands.

In the corner of his eye, Harry saw Remus raise his wand.

When they awoke in the alley at the back of the Leaky Cauldron, neither of them could recall how they'd arrived there or what they had been doing. Yet Harry was strangely certain that neither Remus nor Snape was the culprit.

They interviewed the seventh suspect inside the Leaky Cauldron, both because they were there already and 'cos that was where he lived.

"Seriously?" Neville asked, as he put down his pint of beer. "The Ministry thinks I'm involved in a crazed guerrilla organisation?"

"Another crazed guerrilla organisation," Ron explained, "I mean, from Dawlish's point of view. Apparently traces of dandelion leaves were found at two of the crime scenes."

"I'm flattered to be a suspect, but no," Neville said, smiling. "You can tell Dawlish that there are traces of dandelion almost everywhere in Britain, due to the fact that it's a native species of weed."

The eighth suspect was Minerva McGonagall, who responded to their enquiries about grammar by giving them ginger newts and an impromptu lecture on the correct use of the possessive.

"I would have drilled this into students, but Albus didn't believe it was important. Of course, his own grammar was sorely lacking. I often heard him refer to the wand of his youthful love affair as 'their wand'. 'Unless the wand had multiple owners then it's either his wand or her wand, Albus,' I told him, but he never corrected himself."

Harry thought about Rita's insinuations in _The Life And Lies of Albus Dumbledore_ and how good looking the golden-haired Grindelwald had been and drew his own conclusions.

He glanced at Ron, who raised his eyebrows suggestively.

"Good grammar is essential for the study of Latin and thus for success in advanced Transfigurations," Minerva continued briskly. "Why, I don't think anyone could master the Animagus transformation without a thorough, practical understanding of the colon."

Ron choked and narrowly avoided spitting tea all over the table.

McGonagall was less sympathetic when Harry explained about the list of suspects.

"Dawlish," she said, drawing herself to her full height, "is quite the most foolish student I've had the misfortune to teach. I believe Augusta Longbottom has already hexed him, but if this ludicrous investigation continues then I may have to do so myself."

"Whose colons were your dad and Sirius familiar with, would you say?" Ron asked as they trudged back through the Hogwarts grounds. "D'you reckon Sirius-"

"We're not talking about that, ever," Harry said firmly. "And it's not as if your mum and dad aren't…I mean, what does 'Mollywobbles'-"

"All right, you've made your point," said Ron.

The ninth suspect was particularly difficult to interrogate, given the serious memory loss that he suffered several years ago and his recent, tragic addiction to pixie dust.

"Here for my autograph, are you?" Lockhart asked for the third time in five minutes.

"No, we're here to question you about RAGE, Mr. Lockhart," Harry said.

"Rage? I don't remember being angry. There's a lot I don't remember these days, but I can tell from the volume of fanmail that I must have been a real heart-throb. Why, Gladys Webster insisted on no fewer than six autographs-"

"How do you feel about punctuation?" Ron interrupted.

Lockhart looked quizzically at them. "Punctuation? It isn't needed, most people find an autograph quite self-explanatory."

The final names on the list were Rubeus Hagrid and Aberforth Dumbledore, neither of whom Harry was certain could actually read let alone develop fanatical beliefs about the need for good grammar.

That afternoon the staff in the Aurors office overheard a great deal of shouting within Dawlish's office. Shortly afterward, Dawlish resigned the post of Head of Investigations and took early retirement abroad. They never found the people responsible for the graffiti apostrophes, but a few months later the greengrocer whose shop burned down was convicted of insurance fraud.

Harry was appointed as Head of Investigations two years later. A small upsurge in graffiti about grammar followed his appointment, but he suspected that Malfoy was doing it just to piss him off. Harry reasoned that if Malfoy was followed around from under the Invisibility Cloak on a regular basis, then one day he would be caught in the act.


End file.
